Into the Woods

It was far away, but not too far away. It was raining, but not too hard. It was quiet, but there was conversation. It was hard work, and it was light work, it was soulful work.

I just recently got back from a retreat at Vajrapani Institute for Wisdom Culture in Boulder Creek. The title of the retreat was Cultivating Compassion Training. The Vajrapani Institute is a Tibetan Buddhist retreat center, though this was a secular retreat. The four day retreat was the first to be built from an eight week class that takes place at the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford.  Vajrapani is just up the road from me by 23 mountain miles. Mountain miles are slow, they're narrow, they're windy. There are lots of bumps in the mountain mile. It felt a world away, really. I listened to my friend Sky's new album, it was the perfect soundtrack to the journey by road as well as the journey by mind that was ahead of me. By the time I arrived on Thursday afternoon I was ready to take a deep breath and start in on the work ahead of me.

One of the first questions I was asked when filling out my paperwork upon arrival was "how did you find this retreat?". I needed to reflect on the question, as I really couldn't remember. It took me to the end of the weekend to completely unravel the answer to that straight forward, innocent question. In short, the answer is that I didn't resist the temptation to click on a "register here" button - tho I'm still not certain how I found that button. I've been telling myself silently for a few weeks now "feel afraid but do it anyhow". It was just to be, I guess. You may wonder what is to fear in a retreat? Well, imagine yourself sitting with a group of strangers for four days contemplating compassion in silence and discussion and let me know what emotion or emotions come up for you.

I thought I went there to get away, connect with my compassion for my youngest child and just be still. What I realized along the way, sometimes even hijacked by, was that I was also there to find self-compassion and a deeper compassion for the whole of my family. For a while now I have found it difficult to still my mind without my body moving and this four day retreat helped me with that. I also discovered that my daily hikes with Kitty are my meditation practice of late. This trip helped me reconnect to myself and it reawakened my spiritual curiosity and my commitment to myself. It has been so easy to dismiss myself over the past several years. The sentence usually begins something like "i'm just a...". My new conversations with myself begin "I am..." They are much kinder conversations.

There were plenty of moments over those four days that I felt like a spiritual buffoon, but I muscled through and found compassion for myself. It's a really good place to start/continue the journey.

"May all beings be happy"; the sign you pass through as you leave the Vajrapani Institute.